On the 16th of May 2018, a meeting of the Operational Group of the European Innovation Partnership on Raw Materials took place in Brussels. DG GROW organized this thematic meeting comprising two half-day workshops:
- Re-mining of Mining Waste for Critical Raw Materials (in the morning)
- Enhanced Landfill Mining for Critical Raw Materials (in the afternoon)
These two topics are part of the EU Circular Economy Action Plan. Moreover 30 experts were registered for these workshops and discussed the challenges and opportunities of ELFM.
The following aspects were addressed:
- Knowledge base – what we know about the presence and availability of CRMs in Landfills in Europe;
- Framework conditions – opportunities and barriers;
- Techniques for mining an (re)processing – developments and challenges.
During the afternoon session, Eddy Wille from our COCOON-partner organization OVAM, gave a presentation on ‘Framework conditions – opportunities and barriers’. He referred to the COCOON-project and the objectives of this network on Landfill Management. The data collection on landfills (not only the operational ones) performed by the COCOON-partners is a major step towards a system of integrated Resource management on the EU-level. Combining the information on geogenic and anthropogenic resources starts with reliable and comprehensive data collection. A more detailed research on these aspects is part of the Rawfill project (Interreg NW Europe).
However, Landfill management must be seen in a broader framework than Material management. Aspects such as climate change, biodiversity and safe drinking water, all elements of the Sustainable Development Goals should be part of the framework wherein Sustainable Landfill Management will be developed. A paradigm shift from Final disposal sites to Dynamics Stocks of Resources is required to bring Landfill Management to a more sustainable level.
From this perspective, the traditional black box approach is no longer a suitable Conceptual Site Model. The characterization of landfills should more focus on the above mentioned frameworks and boundary conditions. This implies more details on the characteristics of the content, surface and surroundings in order to evaluate a long term management. Bringing more color into the Black box by geophysical surveys in order to deliver data (Enhanced Inventory Framework) to run the Decision Support Tools is the main objective of Rawfill. By using models from other EU-projects such as SmartGround and Hombre, expertise will be redirected and recycled to the specific management of landfills. AC/DC would sing about landfills: ‘A whole lotta Resources’.
